Four years ago, according to the Tribune, fifth-graders needed 36 to 56 points (about 64 percent) to pass the reading test of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT). Now, they only need 31 points (or 55 percent) to pass.

Third- and fourth-graders needed to score 61 percent to pass their reading tests. Now, that's down to 54 percent.

State officials tell the Tribune this is just routine number crunching. But educators are not so sure.

"It absolutely does not make sense," Sherry Rose-Bond, a Columbus, Ohio, school testing official on the board of directors of the National Council on Measurement in Education, tells the Tribune.

Rose-Bond, who also is a past president of the National Association of Test Directors, says while slight adjustments are part of routine statistic procedure, current scores are poppycock.

"You're not going to have this steady downward tangent," she tells the newspaper.

Part of the problem is money. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools risk losing federal dollars and other sanctions if too many kids flunk math or reading tests.

The percentage of the kids who need to pass to satisfy the federal law is increasing -- strangely, just as state expectations are being lowered.

Currently, 77.5 percent of Illinois students have to pass the tests, the Tribune reports. That's up from 70 percent last year. By the 2013-14 school year, all students across the United States will be required to pass for their schools to avoid sanctions.

Some teachers worry they are no longer educating students, simply training them to take standardized tests.

The situation was satirized on "The Simpsons" last year in the episode "How the Test Was Won," when precocious second-grader Lisa Simpson has an intellectual meltdown under the pressure of taking a standardized test.

Meanwhile, her underachieving brother, Bart, and his fellow dimwits are sent off on a fake "field trip" so they won't drag down test scores and threaten the school's federal funding.

Illinois State Board of Education officials insist that's only something that would happen in a cartoon. They tell the Tribune expectations are not being lowered, and, if anything, they are being raised. Questions are getting tougher.

When test questions are easier, more correct answers can be required to pass. When test questions are tougher, fewer correct answers can be required.

"We are now using the model used throughout the industry," Rense Lange, a psychometrician at the state board, tells the newspaper. "We find that the new model fits well, and we have no reason to think there is anything wrong."

Or, maybe the bar is being lowered so the slower students out there, as "Simpsons" Principal Seymour Skinner puts it, "won't weight down the test with your numbskullery and ruin the future of those students who are our future."

Thousands Of Parents, Teachers Rally For Charter SchoolsThousands of high-energy New York City charter school kids got to skip school on Tuesday morning. Instead of prepping for high-stakes tests, elementary-age charter students were bussed to Cadman Plaza Park in Brooklyn where they were given yellow T-shirts and signs protesting mayoral frontrunner Bill de Blasio's plan to charge rent to charter schools.

ReaderComments (Page 1 of 4)

I graduated high school two years ago. They aren't joking when they say you're being "trained" to take standardized tests. My teachers used to wait until they had review for the state tests finished and then spent the last few days of school teaching us what they thought was important, but wasn't covered on the test. It's ridiculous. Testing is ruining the education system. There has to be a better way.

They've been dumbing us down since the 70s because they don't want anything like the 60s happening again. They just want us all to be stupid video gaming fodder- taught by the video games that are so popular how to become war grunts when we grow up. Do you think anything that is happening right now is just accidental?

So many educators today completely miss the point of standardized testing, and try to "teach the test," which shortchanges the students, as well as the taxpayers supporting the schools. Look at it this way: If there is going to be a test with fifty questions, on a subject about which the teacher has one hundred points to cover, these teachers will try to teach the fifty points, to ensure higher test scores, but may ignore any or all of the other fifty points. How about just teaching all one hundred points, and trying to make sure that the students learn as much as possible? The point of the tests isn't to have everyone score 100%, but, rather, to find out which students are learning adequately for them to be graduated to the next level, and, eventually, to college and The World. By "teaching the test," teachers are not trying to educate, bur, rather, to protect their jobs. They would do just as well to give the standardized test, and stand in the classroom giving all the answers. Either way, they fail to give the students a working knowledge of the subject.The biggest problems with our education system today include not only poor teaching practices, but undeserved tenure, and unions who are more interested in collecting union dues than educating children. In many cases, teachers have neither the drive nor the need to do their jobs adequately. They don't know their subjects, they don't know how to teach them, and they have no interest in improvement. The end result (other than teachers complaining about the requirements of their jobs) is a mass of students being graduated when they can't even write letters with proper grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure, they can't fill out job applications, and they don't know how to make change for a twenty-dollar bill.

Was your son diagnosed with those conditions by a physician of your choosing, or did someone at the school decide he had them, because a teacher didn't want to be creative enough in her teaching to keep his attention?

Nail on the head Kent...I have a teacher in my sons school who was trying to push me into giving my child drugs for adhd...even though he has NEVER been diagnosed nor has any evaluation EVER shown him to have the signs of it. I absolutely refused. The schools are definitely dumbing down our children's education. Children are given the entire grading period to turn in work instead of being held responsible for failing to turn in a paper on time. My seventh grader had no idea what the word "conjugate" means....basic grammar rule, and he didn't know what it meant. The grade scale has been moved down in order to make it look like they are getting better grades. My other son is so proud of his nearly all A report card, but most of the grades are high 80's, low 90's, and only one is what I actually consider an A (98). Teachers don't even need a degree in what they are teaching, and most teachers don't even care about the kids. It is currently a giant joke, tore up from the floor up....a TERRIBLE education. To top it all off, they want to punish parents when the kids do not want to go to school. It is all about funding, precious few give a damn about these kids. It is pathetic and embarrassing...flushing our country's future down the toilet for some federal freakin' funding.

The problem with people like you is you send your kid to school and expect EVERYONE else to teach your kid but when he comes home you do nothing to teach him anything, you, like most parents feel it is the schools responsibility to teach their children everything, my father would have been all over me as a kid because I got even one D, I learned in school and got good grades because my parents made me and now I have a brain that works, Don't dump your stupid uneducated non English speaking kid into the US school system and expect to get an Einstein out the other end, kids are doing worse because their parents and lazy and dumb, so blame your kids IQ and bad grades on the school system and ADD, ADHD or whatever else you can come up with rather that admit your are too kazy to follow up and make sure he stidies at home, the fruit does not fall far from the tree.

Nick, your comments are insanely uneducated. I can only imagine that you have children that are average or above. I have two children who are on IEP's for different learning disabilities and the point of public schools are to do just that, teach. When my children come home, I have things that I do teach them. Things that the schools can no longer teach. Manners, ethics, values, how to run a household, how to be a productive member of society. Because I am sorry to relate this to you, but test scores do not make you a terrific person. Sometimes the line between genius and derranged get very blurred. I've also enrolled my children in an online public school so that they get the attention that they need and make sure that they are understand the concepts and not being "taught" to take a test. So as a learning coach that facilitates all of their learning under the guidance of highly qualified educators they are doing well. However, also remember that just like many people are not cut out to be nurses and doctors, not everyone has the patience to teach and some parents do well to stay well away from that role.

WHEN did "adhd add apd" become common play in the world of our youth? When I was a child it was called BEING A KID, excess energy, chatter box....the CURE? - more chores and extra classwork....burns the energy right out of you. Today's youth are what we called PANSIES....couch spuds, too many video games, too many rides in the car down the block and not enough walking, riding a bike, raking leaves, shoveling snow, mowing lawns, carting firewood, baling hay. Kinda fits in with "spare the rod, spoil the child...spare the hard work and you get lazy adults"

"Nick," you sound like an idiot! There was absolutely NOTHING in "dragonrider's" post that gave any indication that your follow-up comment had even a tiny bit of relevance in the real world! "Nick," you should learn one fact that will help you tremendously on your long road of life: "it is better to keep one's mouth shut, and be thought a fool, than to open it, and remove all doubt." - In the meantime, get some professional help: you appear to have some really serious issues that you're dealing (unsuccessfully) with!

"Chaz Goodman:" You gave no indication whom you were speaking to, but it looks like you might be related to "Nick."

"Nick:" As I recover from my complete disgust at your ignorant, and, apparently, bigoted comment, I notice two things about your post: first, you brag about your great education; second, it looks like you never advanced beyond third-grade English. As you progress through the grades, your teachers will try to teach you how to break one sentence (such as the one above) into six or seven, and they will teach you about periods, commas, and apostrophes. If you are not able to pick up basic English writing skills by seventh grade, you probably have some sort of attention deficit, which needs to be treated. When the shoe's on the other foot, we'll see how mean and nasty you want to be!

Grading scales have definitely been watered down. When/where I went to school, you needed a 94 or better to get an A. Occasionally a teacher would use the 90/80/70/60 scale on tests and we thought we had hit the jackpot! Now, my daughter thinks a 90 is a tough standard. And, because of all the self-esteem crap they waste time teaching our kids, she doesn't seem to feel bad at all about making a 50 on a test. Any kid who makes a 50 on a test SHOULD feel bad about themselves! Teachers DO spend far too much time teaching the standardized tests (that Simpsons episode was right on target), but in the end our kids are the ones who have to step up to the plate and do their work. And, we may have to step in and help them. Meanwhile, we all need to work to get the useless and counterproductive NCLB legislation repealed.

Don't blame NCLB because so many educators choose to "teach the test," rather than just Teach. If students were properly educated, over the entire range of their subjects, instead of just the points that are expected on the test, they would again begin to Learn! In the past, a teacher would ignore all tests, and just Teach his subject. If he taught it well, the students would learn, and standardized testing would be nothing more than an afterthought. If the scores were good, then great! If they were low, then he would work on the weak areas - but he NEVER taught just a few points that were expected on the test! You can teach a person to drive nails, but when you're all done, he still won't know how to build a house!

As long as teachers have huge pay and benefit packages; and as long as many (most, in a lot of schools) high-school graduates can't do simple math or construct simple sentences with proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation; and as long as teachers and their unions fight tooth and nail to prevent their employers from demanding knowledge of their subjects and proficiency in teaching them (i.e.: graduates who can read simple instructions, fill out employment applications, and subtract 23 from 100 without a calculator), our education system will continue to fall behind many others in the world.

This is a test: I work for a supermarket. A while back, we sold ears of corn for 25 cents each. I asked three high school seniors who work in the produce department how much it would cost to buy a dozen ears. NONE of them even came close to knowing the answer! They had absolutely no idea how to even calculate the total. Is this the fault of the parents, the teachers, the school system, the students, or the supermarket?

Parents must be careful whenever someone at school tells them their child has adhd. They must get their child tested by a health care professional. Seems too many children are being pushed into special ed classes these days.